By Timothy Kudo
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
The workers file into Mira Hershey Hall, stopping at a small
table covered with a plastic tablecloth to pour a cup of coffee,
add a touch of non-dairy creamer, and grab a pastry.
They enter room 1657 and walk up to the green and white banner
for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal
Employees with its slogan, “In the public service.”
By this sign, the sign-up sheet for the meeting rests on the
table.
“We’re going to start, but only when people move up
to the front,” says AFSCME organizer Kimberley Carter.
The group filing in is taking time on a warm Saturday afternoon
to prepare for upcoming contract negotiations over wages and the
corresponding marches and rallies scheduled to happen at UCLA on
Sept. 12.
They’re focused on the work they have ahead of them but
they’re a small group of people familiar with each other and
some of the inhibitions more in place with the previous two
meetings are gone.
Like students going to class, most of the 25-member group, who
are union leaders in their respective departments, are sitting in
the last of eight rows of seats.
As they slowly make the move to the front, the group divides in
two along color lines.
Aside from a lone reporter from the AFL-CIO who appears to be
white, the African Americans sit apart from the Latinos.
But, in interviewing one of the workers, the reasons behind the
division become apparent.
“I don’t speak any English,” says Esther
Alvarado in English. She was a worker at the UCLA Laundry Facility
before its closure and now works at the Medical Center, partly
because of the union’s work.
The meeting is supposed to start at 4:00 p.m., and it’s
4:15.
Carter tells the crowd this is the third in a set of meetings.
One happened the night before, Aug. 25, for those working the
graveyard shift and one was held that morning.
In all, over a hundred people showed up for the three.
“As you all know, these meetings are about our upcoming
contract negotiations and how we can get our union stronger,”
Carter says.
The start of the meeting begins with an ice-breaker, the kind
done at summer camp. The group is informed they are to learn the
names of people sitting next to them and report the answers back to
the group.
The instructions are given first in English, then in Spanish, as
would continue for the rest of the meeting.
During the introduction, the lead union organizer, Jose
Hernandez, known to co-workers as J.R., gives the Bruins a small
lesson in union history.
He explains how the AFL-CIO is the umbrella organization
encompassing unions representing the different factions of the
working class and how AFSCME represents many of the workers at
UCLA.
“You have white collar unions, you have blue collar
unions, and sometimes you have a mix like AFSCME,” he
says.
The white collars are the patient care technical workers and the
blue collars are the service employees the union represents.
After organizers realize that the ornately worked out
introduction system is taken too long, everyone just resorts to
saying their own names.
Marco Manjarrez, another union organizer, gives an update on the
situation of casual workers, who often work full-time shifts yet
fail to receive benefits because of loopholes in the
university’s hiring policies.
“The university has promised that in all the new buildings
opening up, they are going to make them 100 percent career,”
Manjarrez says to an ovation.
At which point Hernandez leans over and quietly notes that any
new building that opens up refers only to De Neve Plaza.
Organized labor isn’t so organized today.
The talk then turns to what the meeting is mostly about,
contract negotiations.
“We try to come up with some kind of middle ground that
each side is happy with,” says Cornelius Bowser, a business
agent for the union.
Bowser then goes into the nitty-gritty details of contract
negotiations. Taking the group through the process of impasse
““ when the two sides negotiating can’t come to an
agreement ““Â through to what the Public Employment
Relations Board, the group that oversees public labor disputes,
will do at that time.
After impasse is declared, PERB will begin fact finding to see
the legitimacy of the arguments on each side before leaving the
matter to the parties involved if no wrongdoing is found.
“This year we want to change that,” Bowser says.
After him, another union business agent stands to give the
motivational part of the meeting.
“Are we ready to kick some butt here today?” says
Bob Battle, another business agent.
The spanish translator has trouble translating “kick some
butt.”
“If there is anybody in this room who doesn’t think
that they deserve a raise then leave now,” Battle says.
Surprisingly, nobody gets up.
At the end of his speech, Battle challenges the crowd: “Is
everybody going to be out there on March 12, or am I
mistaken?”
Hernandez shouts back, “You’re mistaken.”
The negotiations are on Sept. 12, not March 12.
“Ok, is everyone going to be out there on Sept. 12?”
Battle asks.
“Yes,” the crowd shouts back.
As the first part of the meeting ends, some leave, some smoke,
and after a short break off into small groups to go over how to
spread the unions message to their co-workers, everyone regroups
for a pageant of sorts.
“This week we did nominations for who is the worst
manager,” says Grant Lindsay, a union organizer.
There’s a list of about 10 people from around campus voted
on by the group members.
“So, if you’ve got a nominee on there, be
proud,” Lindsay says.